One of Keane's best efforts and a cd program I play quite often. And as stated an excellent program as well.
I'm also a fan of Christopher L. Stone's scores for The History Channel/A&E's "Civil War Journal" and "The American Revolution" which were issued on cd.
David Robidoux has done some interesting work recently for HBO in their sports documentaries.
Last but certainly not least is the documentary score work of Michael Bacon (Brother of Kevin) who has composed many fine scores for PBS "The American Experience" and also the "Nova" series.
GRAND CANYON : The Hidden Secrets is, I think, one of the best things Bill Conti has composed - and the film itself is great to watch, especially on an IMAX screen!
John Barry: ACROSS THE SEA OF TIME James Bernard: BLOODSUCKERS George Fenton: BLUE PLANET, PLANET EARTH Michael Giacchino: EARTH DAYS Jerry Goldsmith; THE ARTIST WHO DID NOT WANT TO PAINT Lee Holdridge: THE GREAT WHALES (please Intrada) Jose Nieto: THE CRUSADES
Goldsmith was asked to score one of the "National Geographic" documentaries but declined because he didn't want his music to compete with the narration.
Hard to believe that no one has mentioned Richard Rodgers' score for VICTORY AT SEA. You can hear a lot of this amazing score at youtube. (This guy didn't just compose lovely songs.) The music in this documentary is phenomenal.
Maybe people don't think it is a documentary as it was shown over time on TV, but I think it is.
Hard to believe that no one has mentioned Richard Rodgers' score for VICTORY AT SEA. You can hear a lot of this amazing score at youtube. (This guy didn't just compose lovely songs.) The music in this documentary is phenomenal.
Maybe people don't think it is a documentary as it was shown over time on TV, but I think it is.
And don't forget "Winston Churchill: The Valient Years" and "The American Dream" which featured the last voiceover work of Edward G. Robinson. There's also Norman Dello Joio's work for the "Air Power" series and Morton Gould's scores for the "World War I" series.
Great topic! I have over a thousand soundtracks to documentary films in my collection and think that it has, as genre, turned out some of the best scores that can be found out there. Not to repeat any of the ones that have been mentioned already, but there has been some very worthy documentary scores released in the past few years that should get the attention and please the of folks on this board.
One of my favorite scores of the last 10 years or so, CRIMSON WING (DisneyNature - 2010) by Cinematic Orchestra is beautifully breathtaking and a true revelation to behold. Just check out this link -
Another fantastic documentary film titled THE WILDEST DREAM (National Geographic - 2011), had an incredible orchestral score composed by newcomer Joel Douek. Awesome and powerful stuff and highly recommended for those who love epic, but also very thought provoking music.
I'll second the mentions of Philip Glass' The Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line, also Danny Elfman's Standard Operating Procedure, all brilliant scores.
I also really liked Dickon Hinchliffe's score for Project Nim recently. The selection of music from Michael Nyman that PN's director used on Man on Wire (with a couple of original cues from J Ralph) was pretty excellent.
Both of mine have been mentioned already. TRINITY AND BEYOND: THE ATOMIC BOMB MOVIE by Morgan & Stromberg is my favorite. It's an epic, gorgeously orchestrated, full blooded score, searingly performed that quite often raises the hair on my arms when I listen to it.
After that, Lee Holdridge's IN SEARCH OF PEACE, a rich, and at times, deeply moving score.
Hard to believe that no one has mentioned Richard Rodgers' score for VICTORY AT SEA. You can hear a lot of this amazing score at youtube. (This guy didn't just compose lovely songs.) The music in this documentary is phenomenal.
Maybe people don't think it is a documentary as it was shown over time on TV, but I think it is.
Of course it is, and it's great. Thanks to our mutual friend CAT for introducing me to it.
So I'm about to listen to and provide a review for the Queen of Versailles documentary score, and was curious how many other famous or otherwise great scores are out there for documentaries in general. Can you list the best and/or your faves?
My review of The Queen of Versailles, taken from Film, Music & Media:
Composer Jeff Beal sure has one heck of an eclectic resume. The three-time Emmy winner (and eight-time nominee overall) has scored a huge host of film and television creations, including the critically-acclaimed Pollock and Appaloosa of the former and numerous works in the latter, most notably the USA network’s Monk but also recent others such as Ugly Betty, the HBO series Carnivale and Rome, and the theme music to another USA hit, In Plain Sight. In listening to Beal’s score for the documentary The Queen of Versailles, his compositional experience is easily evident, but unfortunately, fails to succinctly wrap the listener’s attention beyond a select few salient points.
Magnolia Pictures’ The Queen of Versailles follows a billionaire family along a journey beginning with the construction of America’s largest home, at a paltry (!) 90,000 square feet. Due to economic downturns and the rapidly declining value of the dollar, however, the family’s home morphs from a triumphant dream to a tumultuous and divisive reminder of the haphazard lifestyle of the United States’ richest citizens. For a score accompanying what seems to be such a Kardashian motif based on synopsis alone, Jeff Beal has constructed a surprisingly robust collection of tunes here. The album begins with a very classical and baroque-sounding mixture of instrumentation, involved and roiling, but it’s readily apparent that one of the score’s problems is the extremely short length of the tracks. On the seventh track, “Time Share King,” Beal begins to really show his talent for turning narrow corners inside a tightly-confined score, as a gentle piano grabs the listener’s attention, just for a moment, before the next cues introduce a flitting harpsichord melody. “Miss America Gala” then brings the beginning and middle of the score full circle, as trumpets sound a tender yet whimsical announcement. The whole thing really reminds me of the scant work of Patrick Doyle on his score for Bridget Jones’ Diary. It’s then with standout tracks “Mr. & Mrs. Las Vegas” and “The Crash” that Beal lays out the melancholy, combining strings and piano with reverberating electronic pulses of percussion. Following “First Marriage, Tina” and “Humbled,” which fondly recall Thomas Newman’s American Beauty (albeit with far less wrenching gravity), however, Beal’s score begins to lose steam. The last third of the album really does not engage the listener beyond a casual reminder of the album’s first third, though the eight-minute conclusion “Waltz for Versailles (End Credits)” gives the listener pause right before ending on its own momentum.
At just over forty-six minutes, The Queen of Versailles is a long enough score to accompany a movie, and one might think that because Queen is a documentary, that length is duly sufficient and accomplishes its goal of guiding the film’s plotlines. Based solely on its own emotional impact, however, Jeff Beal’s The Queen of Versailles, while interesting at points in motif and instrumentation, is completely average in aggregate, and casually forgettable following its cessation. Here, Beal has created a suitable Renaissance-sounding score whose main issue is contiguity, rather than continuity.
Edmund Meisel: Berlin, Sinfonie einer Großstadt George Antheil, Ballet mécanique Wolfgang Zeller, Serengeti darf nicht sterben Lalo Schifrin, The Hellstrom Chronicle
